


whole, still

by enredo



Series: roots will grow [3]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest, Transfer Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 18:05:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5014780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enredo/pseuds/enredo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thiago, before leaving for Munich, and the people he hurts in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	whole, still

He makes everyone mad.

Not really, though, not at all, because they love him and they want what’s best for him, they want what he wants. So they’re not mad at him on the outside, not his father, not his mother, not Rafa nor Jona.

But he hurts them all, knows he will the minute Pep Guardiola calls him himself and says _‘Thiago, I have a place on the team and I want you to take it’,_ he knows he’s already gone. He tells himself it’s explainable, that someone can’t just refuse a place on Bayern Munich when Pep Guardiola calls them himself, not when they’re rotting away on Barcelona’s background and they love Barcelona, they do, but not enough to let it kill them.

 

He tells dad first, because dad is his boss and he’s dad and if anyone’s going to think logically about this, it’s him.

He says _‘Go. Son, if you’re sure that’s what you want, take him up on that offer.’_ He’d like to lie and say he thought about it once, twice, three times, but he knows he’s already accepted it, and he can’t hate himself so soon before even going through with his decision.

 

Mom comes next, and it’s easier because it’s mom, she had to deal with his father moving long before he was born, long before they divorced. She tells him she’ll help him house hunt in Munich, if he wants, help him decor and choose furniture and he thanks her because that was hers and Rafa’s thing, he never really cared for anything but a bed.

 

Then comes Jona. His hands are shaking already and Jona notices something’s off the moment he arrives on Thiago and Rafa’s apartment, Thiago sitting on the couch with his head between his hands and his voice is anything but steady when he speaks.

“I need to tell you something.” He starts, and he barely gets it out, because Jona doesn’t even know what it is but he knows, somehow, Thiago’s about to break his heart. Thiago closes his hands in tight fists and his nails are digging on the palms of his hands, as if the physical pain was going to help him somehow. It doesn’t.

“Thiago?” Jona tries, moves Thiago’s hands until he’s the one holding Thiago’s face between his, eyes begging for him to do it already, say what he need, rip it off fast as if it was a band-aid. Thiago’s never been good at not being cruel.

“I got a call.” He starts. “I got a call from Guardiola.”

That’s all he gets out before he sees Jona’s realization all over his face. He knows. He’s silent when his drops his hands from Thiago’s face, resting them back on his own lap as if anchoring himself. Thiago wants to apologize.

No. He _wants_ to want to apologize. He wants to feel sorry. He’s not.

It’s maybe a minute, or five, when Jona speaks again.

“When are you going?” He asks, because he knows Thiago’s already decided.

“I don’t know yet.” Thiago answers. “I’ll tell you when I know.”

Jona nods, and says nothing more, doesn’t yell at him or curse him for not being let in on the decision, doesn’t ask him what does that mean for them. He seems to simply accept it, as if he’d been waiting for Thiago to do this someday, and maybe that’s what breaks Thiago’s heart.

“When you tell Rafa,” He says. “ Don’t sugarcoat it for him, don’t push him, you need to let him hate you.”

“I know.”

“If you try to make it seem like it’s nothing you’re going to break his heart. I’ll kill you if you do that.”

“I know.”

  


It’s worse that in the end, he doesn’t have control over when Rafa gets to know, and he isn’t the one who tells him what’s going to happen. He drying the dishes when he hears the front door being slammed shut hard, with unnecessary force.

“Thiago!” Rafa’s voice calls. He takes a deep breath before meeting him in the living room, Rafa holding his phone so tight in his hand that all blood has vanished from his knuckles. “Care to fucking explain why did mom just ask me how I’m holding up about you moving to fucking Germany?”

It goes downhill from that.   

“Why?” Rafa asks, and his voice is already broken the way it gets when he’s not crying just because he’s angry.

“You know why,” He says. “Because it’s Bayern. You don’t tell them no.”

“It’s Barcelona!” Rafa yells back, frustrated, accusatory. “You fucking do when it’s Barcelona.”

“Rafa–”

“No, just–” Rafa says, and then laughs, humorlessly, broken. “We were going to do it together, Thiago. You and me, you _promised_.”

Thiago doesn’t have a reply to that.

“You said you’d help me, because you like to deny but you know I’m not as good as you and you said _we_ were going to make it first team and we were going to stay.”

And that– that’s the worst part of it all, and that’s the moment he has to hold himself back not to pull Rafa to him, not to hold him so tight it might break his bones because that’s not true, it’s not. He wants to shake Rafa out of it, because he doesn’t see how good he is, how talented, he doesn’t see how he out does Thiago on the pitch and on being a person.

“That’s– You know that’s not true.”

“Fuck you, like you care!” Rafa says. He hears Jona voice in his head, _‘You need to let him hate you’_ , but he can’t let Rafa think he doesn’t love him more than anything, more than he should, more than it’s healthy to be called brotherly, fraternal.

He hates to think he’s doing it to him again, hates to remember how Rafa was when they got separated, when Thiago got to play and Rafa didn’t, when Rafa wouldn’t eat or sleep properly because he missed Thiago so much and thought Thiago wouldn’t even look back at him, remember him.  

“Don’t say that,” He says. “You know I love you.” It’s weird, to let the words roll of his tongue like this, in this seriousness, even if it’s the truth. Because Rafa is everything to him, but he’s so used to not saying how he feels about him out loud that the words feel foreign when said.

Rafa doesn’t get it, doesn’t want to, so he goes upstair and leaves Thiago alone.

 

Rafa barely talks to him in the following two days. Thiago could count on his fingers the words he’d said to him. He doesn’t so much as look as Thiago when Thiago looks at him, but he does when he thinks Thiago can’t see, and he wishes he couldn’t because the broken look on Rafa’s face is worse every time he does.

 

“This is not me leaving you.” He says, finally, on the third day.

Rafa snorts, “What would you call it, then?”

“Can I say something? I just need you to listen. It won’t take two minutes of your time and you can go back to hating me.”

“Talk.” Rafa breathes out.

“This is not me leaving you– I know, just, it’s not. I’d take you with me if I could but I know, I know that’s not what you want. You want Barcelona and it’s fine, it’s ok.”

Rafa doesn’t need to confirm that because Thiago knows him.

“And you’ve always been better than me at waiting and you’ve always worked harder and you’re going to stay, Rafa. You’re going to make it first team and you’re going to be the next Iniesta but I can’t. I have to play, I need to play.”

Rafa’s silent, just looking at Thiago with an expression Thiago can’t figure out, and it’s wrong that he doesn’t know what Rafa is thinking because he always does, because he knows every smile and every frown and every expression on Rafa’s face, as Rafa knows his.

“Of course you do.” He says simply, but there’s no hint of sarcasm or mockery, there’s just Rafa, hurt but understanding. He stays on the living room and Rafa goes upstairs, locks himself in his room and Thiago doesn’t follow.

 

He feels strange waking up, disconnected in the way someone feels when they fall asleep at a weird time of the day and spend minutes trying to figure out if it’s morning or afternoon or the middle of the night. The lights are turned off but the TV is on, playing jewels infomercials and setting a bluish, muted light all over the room.

“You fell asleep,” Rafa says softly, no trace of the previous days emotional exhaustion on him. He’s crouching down on the floor, reaches out almost as if he’s going to touch Thiago’s cheek, but ultimately doesn’t.

“What time is it?” His own voice is hoarse from sleep when he talks. He rubs his eyes, starts moving to a sitting position.

“Twenty past eleven,” Rafa replies, and he’s looking at Thiago like something. He moves, then, gets up and sits besides Thiago, body turned to him and knee pressed against the outside of Thiago’s thigh. The whole thing feels weird, like something out of an old movie, as if something important is just waiting to happen.

“I’m sorry for being a dick.” Rafa says, and Thiago looks at him incredulously because of course Rafa would apologize, as if he’s not in his every right to be mad at Thiago’s selfishness. “You deserve to play. You do, you’re so good, I shouldn’t– You deserve to go. Congratulations.”

His voice is low, and it’s so sincere Thiago’s throat closes and he wants to cry, he wants to honest to god cry because of course Rafa would make this about Thiago being good, of course he’d turn this into another way of looking up to him and Thiago can’t take it. He pulls Rafa into a hug, starved of touch from the days Rafa would barely look at him. Rafa goes in easily, they move and turn and Rafa ends up practically sitting on his lap, face tucked between Thiago’s neck and shoulder and Thiago’s arms wrapped crushingly tight around him, as if Rafa’s going to vanish if he doesn’t make sure he’s there, tucked into his body.

“Jesus, Rafa– You don’t know, you have no idea–” He says, kisses the top of his baby brother’s head and feels Rafa let out a shaky breath against his neck.

“I don’t wanna let you go.” Rafa says, small and muffled and words spoken brokenly against Thiago’s skin.

“You’re not,” Thiago says, kisses the closest part of Rafa’s face he can reach, beside his eye. “Half of me is staying here, you’re making sure half of me stays here.”

Rafa moves just enough to look at Thiago, look and whisper, “Thiago…”, but he never finds out what he was going to say, doesn’t need to because Rafa grabs his face between his hands and caresses his cheekbones with his thumbs and Thiago can’t breath; can’t think, even less when Rafa brings his lips to Thiago’s and kisses him, god, he _kisses_ him.

Rafa’s lips are gentle against his but a firm pressure, holding Thiago’s face as if he’s turn away, as if, and Thiago should because he should be alone in this, should be the selfish and sick one but everything changes because Rafa is kissing him and he’s kissing back, arms pulling at Rafa until he surely is sitting on his lap, now, pressed flush against Thiago and tongue darting out to lick at his bottom lip.

“Rafa…” He breathes Rafa’s name against his lip and Rafa shudders visibly at that, or maybe at Thiago’s hand sneaking up under his shirt, resting warmly at the bottom of his spine.

“Half of me is leaving.” Rafa says. “Let me have this.”

Thiago sighs against the corner of Rafa’s lips and forgets to think, leaves thinking for later when his heart would not be beating so hard and fast enough to break out of his ribcage. He kisses Rafa’s forehead again, his cheeks and his eyelids, his jaw and anywhere he can reach. “Anything.”

He’d give Rafa anything. Rafa finds Thiago’s lips again, fits one hand in his hair, and takes what Thiago gives.  

**Author's Note:**

> straight from hell: another part of this. sorry about any grammar mistakes, i wrote this like 2 weeks ago and haven't bothered proof reading


End file.
